


Bad Health Floral

by ssrhpurgatory



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Flower Shop, F/M, Human!Rhea, human!Hera
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-16
Updated: 2020-09-24
Packaged: 2020-12-17 11:23:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21053591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssrhpurgatory/pseuds/ssrhpurgatory
Summary: Alexander Hilbert left his job as a surgeon to open up a flower shop, and has been struggling to make it work since... and struggling even more to keep up some pretense of a social life, which becomes suddenly vital to his well-being when a series of late-night deliveries turn into a serious flirtation with a woman named Rosemary. Fortunately, he’s got the backup of his employees, Renée Minkowski and Doug Eiffel, along with their part-time bookkeeper Hera Pryce, all of whom are working through issues of their own, from Renée dealing with aging parents and an absent husband, to Hera’s overbearing mother, to Doug’s extremely awkward attempts to flirt with Hera.(Real story: I got a misprinted Hilbert shirt with “Bad Wealth Floral” on the back and decided if I changed it to “Bad Health Floral” it would be perfectly in character. This resulted.)





	1. Chapter 1

A ringing phone jolted Alexander Hilbert out of his doze. When he’d first left the field of medicine and decided to open a flower shop instead, he had thought he would be able to handle offering 24-hour delivery—after all, it wasn’t any different than being on call, now was it? And at least this job he could foist off on other staff members. But it turned out that it was hard to find someone willing to sit up all night in an empty flower shop to man the phones and store email account, so more often than not, he wound up doing it himself. There hadn’t been a single week since the store had opened where he’d managed to sleep the whole night through more than one or two nights a week.

He’d thought, once or twice, about no longer offering overnight delivery, but the sort of people who were desperate enough to order up a bouquet at one in the morning were also desperate enough to pay handsomely for the service. And truth be told, those late-night deliveries were keeping the store afloat.

He fumbled his cell phone to his ear and spat out his usual phone greeting on instinct, all in one long string of words. “You-have-reached-Bad-Health-Floral-twenty-four-hour-deliveries-of-floral-arrangements-in-the-greater-Springfield-area-how-may-I-help-you?”

“Oh, thank god,” came a man’s voice, thick with a laconic southern drawl. “Listen, I know it’s a bit out of your way, but I’ve got a friend in the next town over—”

“We do not deliver outside of the greater Springfield area,” Alexander interjected, waking up a bit more.

“I know, I know, but you’re the only flower shop willing to deliver at this hour and I’m willing to pay for it.”

“Fifty dollar surcharge for after-hours out-of-area deliveries.”

“I’ll give you a hundred. I’m desperate here.”

Alexander pulled his cell phone away from his ear and frowned at it. “One hundred?” he asked, verifying, as he put the phone back.

“And I want a massive bouquet.”

Alexander grabbed his notepad. “Any preferences?”

“It ought to have rosemary in there somewhere if you’ve got aromatics on hand, but other than that, go wild. Something really special. Anything up to about $200 in flowers, I’d say.”

Alexander frowned at his phone again. “Two hundred?”

“That’s right.”

Alexander was starting to wonder what sort of trouble this man had gotten himself into, to be dropping three hundred dollars on flowers in the middle of the night on a Thursday. “Should I include message with it?”

“Aw, hell. Yeah. Let me think about that for a moment.”

“Very well.” Alexander woke the store computer up with a wiggle of the mouse. “Would you care to provide me with name and address for delivery, contact information, and method of payment?”

The man ran through the information.

“And may I charge card for full amount you are willing to pay and provide refund of difference if necessary?”

“Nah, just keep the full amount. I really am grateful. And…” the man trailed off for a moment, then sighed. “I guess… just put a card in there that says ‘I’m sorry.’ And sign it from Al.”

“Just a moment as I put through charge.” The card went through without issue, which should have made Alexander happy, but the message the man had asked for had him feeling just a little bit nervous. Bouquets like this wound up going to slighted mistresses more often than not. Or slighted wives, which was worse. “Thank you for using Bad Health Floral for your floral delivery needs. And good night.”

“No, really, thank you. You’re a lifesaver.”

There was a beep, and the line went dead. Alexander set his cell phone down and eyed the order request with dread. At least the address wasn’t actually that far away; Springfield bled into Fairview just a few miles from where his shop was located, though the address was a good ten minutes further into the other town.

Something on the order form caught his eye, and he found himself smiling a little in spite of his worry about the bouquet’s reception. “Rosemary for Rosemary,” he hummed to himself as he went through into the shop proper and started opening the cases he kept the flowers in. It wasn’t a common bouquet additive, but fortunately he had some on hand. He added sage as well, along with white peonies and hydrangeas, pink and white roses, and a few glorious springs of a lavender-colored hyacinth. And then, for the next little while, he slid into the calm, quiet space he always inhabited while arranging a bouquet.

He had forgotten to ask Al whether the recipient was expecting a bouquet at this hour. With luck, this Rosemary person would be a night owl, or there would be a doorman Alexander could leave the bouquet with.

Alexander slid into his winter coat, gathered up the bouquet, and walked out the back door of his shop into frigid air and the first few flakes of the snowstorm that the weather man had promised that night. He sighed and went back into the shop for his scarf and the large, fluffy bear-skin hat that had immigrated to the States with him. Might as well be properly prepared for the weather, just in case.

The apartment complex, when he pulled up outside of it, turned out to be the sort where you were expected to walk straight up to the apartment you were visiting, no doorman or buzzer necessary. Well, if this Rosemary did not answer her door, Alexander thought, he could leave the bouquet outside of it and hope that her neighbors did not wake before her and try to steal it. He glanced along the line of apartment units and found the right number, and was heartened to find that there were lights on in the second-floor apartment he thought must belong to the apartment number he had been given.

He knocked cautiously when he reached the top of the stairs; it was the apartment he’d thought it would be. The door was flung open, and around the bouquet Alexander could see a short, fat Black woman, her hair wrapped in a brightly-colored and wildly-patterned scarf and her body wrapped in a red robe.

“About damn time—” she started to say in an irate voice as the door opened, and then she caught sight of who was actually waiting for her. “Oh. You’re not Al.”

“No.” Alexander said. “But these are from him.”

“Oh. Thank you,” the woman said, taking the bouquet from him, her voice and actions almost mechanical.

And then, she burst into tears.

Rosemary realized, suddenly, that she was standing in the open door of her apartment, sobbing over what was probably the most gorgeous bouquet anyone had ever given her, right in front of the delivery man. He was staring at her with a look of concern, and suddenly all she could think was to reassure him. “It’s not the flowers,” she said, then took a deep breath to steady herself, hating the way her voice sounded, hating the tears on her face. “The flowers are gorgeous. This bouquet is gorgeous. Thank you. Do you need a tip? Let me get you a tip.” She turned, still feeling stiff and mechanical, and set the bouquet down on the couch, then straightened up and wobbled a bit.

The delivery man started towards her, catching Rosemary by the elbow and steadying her. “I do not need a tip,” he said in a deep voice, with just a hint of a foreign accent—maybe Russian? Something Slavic, at least, Rosemary suspected—to his voice.

“You’re delivering flowers at midnight. You deserve a tip,” Rosemary said, shrugging his hands off her and reaching around behind the door for the peg her purse was hung on. Her mind was trying to make sense of the situation and finding it vaguely ridiculous. What sort of business delivered flowers in the middle of the night, anyway?

And why had Al decided that sending goddamn flowers was easier than sending her a text?

“No, please,” the man in her doorway said. “Al has already paid handsomely for bouquet. There is no need.”

“That goddamn man!” Rosemary found herself almost shouting, and shut her eyes, wincing. “Sorry.”

“No need to apologize. I will… I will be on my way.”

Rosemary glanced at the window in the hallway, noting the snow that was coming down in giant, fluffy flakes. “Is it safe to drive out there?”

“I have four-wheel drive and snow tires. Will be fine,” the man said, holding his hands up reassuringly.

Rosemary bit her lower lip and frowned. “Look, if… if I give you my number, will you text me when you get back to… to whereever it is you’re headed? Only I’d hate for you to wind up in an accident just because my damn ex-boyfriend decided to send me flowers instead of showing up himself.”

“Ex-boyfriend?”

“Well, he certainly is now. This is the fifth time in a row he’s skipped out on his turn to visit me. I know his job keeps him busy, but there are limits to what a girl can tolerate, you know.”

The delivery man looked her up and down, and Rosemary found her face getting a little warm. All right, so maybe she’d left girlhood behind a few decades ago, but there was no call for him to eye her so blatantly.

He gave her a thin little smile that would have been almost grim if it hadn’t gone all the way to his eyes, wrinkling them into kind amusement behind his round glasses. “I expect to see you again, then.”

Rosemary raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“Bouquets make for excellent ammunition, and if I were Al, I would not give up a woman like you without a fight.”

Rosemary blushed so hard it made her suddenly uncomfortable, and she looked away from the delivery man’s direct gaze, shifting awkwardly. As she did, the man gave her a little bow, and before she could react again he was down the stairs and out the door of the building. She stepped out onto the landing, peering down through the full-length window into the parking lot below. Unfortunately, his car was far enough down the line of buildings that she couldn’t tell much about it other than it was dark-colored, which in the dim light of the apartment parking lot could mean it was almost any color. She realized belatedly that she hadn’t given the man her phone number... and also that it would be ridiculous to go running out into the parking lot in her fuzzy slippers and her ratty old robe. She just hoped that he would make it back to where he’d come from safely.

So instead of worrying, she went back into her apartment, shut and locked the door behind her, and threw herself down on the couch to cry.

Alexander drove carefully up the alley beside his shop and parked as best as he could without being able to see the lines that demarcated the parking spots behind the building through the snow that had already accumulated. For a long, quiet moment, he sat there, staring out at the falling snow and thinking about the woman he had just met, and how he hadn’t quite been able to resist complimenting her.

And then he shook his head and laughed a little at himself. He only knew what she looked like. Who was he to say she was worth fighting for?

It must be all these sleepless nights getting to him. He needed to find another florist willing to work nights soon. Hopefully between the pair of them, Doug and Renée would be able to keep the shop running tomorrow without him—he certainly knew they could, if they needed to, but only if they didn't spend the entire day fighting about the right way to do things. If Alexander was lucky, they would keep their bickering to a minimum. He desperately needed get a good night’s sleep. Or good day’s sleep, in this case.

The phone in his breast pocket let out a warning ping, and he pulled it out and sighed, checking his notifications. Of course. An order through the website for rush delivery to the hospital.

Always his least favorite sort.


	2. Chapter 2

“Jesus. You look done in.”

Alexander blinked blearily at Renée, who had just shaken him awake. He had fallen asleep in the back office of the flower shop, sitting in the computer chair with his head on the desk, and his entire back ached. He really needed to put a futon in here or something, he realized. He was getting too old to doze in a chair, and he didn’t always make it upstairs to his apartment between deliveries on busy nights. “Was woken up about eleven by man who needed to send apology bouquet. And then…” he sighed.

“Hospital?” Renée asked, a frown on her face.

“Yes.”

She gave a little nod. “Go to bed, old man. Doug and I can handle the morning.”

“Do not fight with him today, hm? Am too worn out to deal with shouting through my floorboards.”

“Hera’s coming in to do the books today, remember? That’ll keep Doug busy.”

“Ah, yes.” Whenever their part-time bookkeeper was in the building, Doug abandoned his turf war with Renée to try and flirt with Hera. Or at least, that was what both Alexander and Renée assumed. It was always hard to tell what, exactly, Doug was trying to achieve with his conversational forays in that direction. Or in any direction, really. “Well. Wake me if you need to.”

“I will not,” Renée said sternly. She pointed in the direction of the stairs that lead up to his apartment. “Bed.”

Alexander pulled himself creakily to his feet and shuffled his way up the back stairs, feeling much older than his fifty-one years. He wanted to collapse straight in bed, but after dozing off at the desk, he knew he would regret it if he laid down in bed without stretching first.

There was a twinge in his lower back as he started working it over with a foam roller, and it made him want to laugh. How was it that human bodies were so absurdly fragile and so incredibly tough, all at once? One of the deliveries he’d made to the hospital… no. Don’t think about that, he told himself. If he wasn’t careful, it would be all to easy for old traumas to slip in around the edges, and then he wouldn’t sleep at all, no matter how tired he was.

It was a relief, these days, to be doing something that other peoples’ lives didn’t depend upon. A relief to be bringing joy or consolation or comfort, without the grief and pain that had always stepped hand-in-hand with them when he had been a surgeon.

Of course, there were probably just as many tears, he thought, remembering the woman who had been the recipient of his first bouquet of the night. And those had not been happy tears.

But best not to think about that woman, either; no doubt that boyfriend of hers would make it up to her somehow.

Alexander sat up and rolled his shoulders. There. Much better. And then, he half-crawled, half-clambered his way from the floor to the bed, pulled the blankets haphazardly over himself, and passed out immediately.

“How’s the boss?” Doug asked, as Renée came back out to the front of the shop and started picking flowers for the centerpieces they needed to have ready for a fundraiser that evening.

“Dead on his feet. He can’t have gotten more than a couple of hours of sleep.” Renée sighed. Hera had said enough about the financial state of the store over the past year to make it clear to Renée that they didn’t have the budget they needed to hire on a fourth full-time staff member… but with aging parents who had just recently moved in with her and a husband who traveled frequently for work, Renée wasn’t able to take as many night shifts as she’d like. Doug was more than willing to pick up the extra hours, but Alexander would never trust Doug alone in the store all night; Alexander had voiced a suspicion once that Doug would wind up getting bored and hosting a rave in the flower shop, and Renée couldn’t quite find it in herself to deny that this seemed like exactly the sort of thing Doug would do.

And the shop needed the money that being the only 24-hour floral delivery option in the area brought them. The shop had been struggling since it had opened; bad branding, Renée thought, but when she brought up changing the name to something more traditional for a florist, Alexander always laughed and shook his head and said it was a funny joke, calling a flower shop run by a former doctor “Bad Health Floral.” It wasn’t, but nothing his employees said could convince him otherwise… and all things considered, he wasn’t a terrible boss, so despite Alexander’s very bad jokes, neither Renée nor Doug were in any hurry to move on to other jobs. He always made sure they were paid before he was, and if his suggestions for changes to their designs were a little harsh from time to time… well, that just made the inevitable complements when he liked their work that much better. And they did have to put up with him being a bit of a curmudgeon most of the time and the fact that, when he was putting together an arrangement, he was always so focused that the shop could have been on fire around him and he wouldn’t notice, but all things considered, it could have been much worse.

“Hera texted, by the way. She’s going to be a little late. Mom things, she said.” Doug was looking down at his phone instead of preparing the supplies they’d need to keep the centerpieces fresh until it was time to drop them off that evening. Renée opened her mouth to yell at him, but then remembered Alexander’s exhausted face and crossed the room, throwing her armload of flowers down in front of Doug with a wet, leafy thud.

“Those buckets ready yet?”

Doug dropped his phone on the countertop, startled. “Right, yes, sorry! On it!”

“I don’t want to have to yell at you over stupid shit this morning, Doug,” Renée said in a low, warning voice as Doug started pulling out the little chemical packets they used in the water to keep flowers fresh. “He’s exhausted. I took a look at the deliveries from last night and he was in and out of the hospital five times.”

The local hospital was massive and attached to the university, which meant that a lot of their business was flower arrangements meant for people who might laugh at the irony of getting flowers from a shop called “Bad Health.”

Or sometimes, for their families.

Renée didn’t know why Alexander had left the medical profession, but it was clear as day to her that some trauma had been the reason for it. When Alexander could avoid it, he never went near the hospital at all, leaving all those deliveries to her and Doug. But he couldn’t always avoid doing deliveries on overnights, and those nights… those nights left him grey-faced and shaking in the mornings.

Renée went back to picking flowers and greenery out of the selection in the shop, weeding out flowers that had started to lose their bloom as she went. Maybe they could put together some discount bouquets with them once they were done with the centerpieces.

After all, every little bit helped.

Rosemary woke up with a headache and a sore back, the former from spending half the night crying, the latter because she was no longer young enough that sleeping on the couch all night was a sensible choice.

Her cell was buzzing, and she reached sleepily for it and answered.

“H’lo?”

“Rosie.” It was Al.

“You bastard.”

“Yeah, I know. But I had fifteen minutes in between work meetings and I…” Al sighed.

“We need to have a tough conversation and there wasn’t time for it.”

“Yeah.”

“You still could have texted.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, well, you’ve been sorry for a lot of things lately.” Sorry he couldn’t spare a lot of time for her when she visited. Sorry he’d skipped out on the past five times he’d been scheduled to visit her. Sorry he’d abandoned her when she visited him, leaving her with his local partner, Sterling, who seemed lovely but who Rosemary barely knew, and who was awkward and anxious about Rosemary in turn.

There was another sigh from Al. “Were the flowers at least nice?”

Rosemary glanced over at the counter that separated the kitchen from the living room in her apartment. She had managed to drag herself out of her crying jag long enough the night before to get them into water; after all, it wasn’t their fault her boyfriend was an ass. “They’re gorgeous. God, Al, it’s the most beautiful bouquet I’ve ever gotten.” Rosemary heard her voice tighten, felt the tears threatening, and shoved the feeling down. No, deal with Al first.

“I’m glad they got there. Think I woke the florist up when I ordered them.”

“There wasn’t a business name on the card. Where’d they come from?”

“My secret. Now that I know I can order gorgeous bouquets for you any time of day or night…”

“It’s not like you’ll have any reason to, now.”

“We’ll still be friends, won’t we?”

Rosemary let out an exasperated sigh. Well, the damn man was probably right. They’d been good friends before they started having sex, and they’d probably manage to be good friends after. “Guess I will be seeing that delivery man again, then.”

“Oh?” Al sounded amused.

“Yeah. I said you were my ex now and he made some off-hand quip about how bouquets make excellent ammunition, and no doubt my ex would be fighting to get me back.”

“Oh.” Al was obviously intrigued. “Was he attractive?”

“Are you suggesting I date a florist, Al?”

“Nothing of the sort. Have rebound sex with a florist, maybe.”

Rosemary snorted. “I couldn’t tell whether he was attractive or not, the way he was bundled up against the cold.” She paused, and considered. “Nice voice, though.”

“Russian?”

“Think so.”

“That’s probably the fellow I ordered from, then.”

“In any case, why are we talking rebounds when we haven’t even officially broken up yet?”

“Right, right.”

“I’m not getting what I need from this relationship.”

“I know, Rosie. I haven’t been there for you when you need me.” Al sighed. “And some of it’s this job, but…”

“Some of it’s Sterling, too, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. I’ve… It’s my first time, Rosie. I’ve never… we both date around, but somehow he always comes first in my mind, and I’ve never…” Al sighed again. “I’ve never had a primary before. I’ve never wanted a primary before. But Sterling…”

Rosemary found herself smiling in spite of her disappointment, in spite of how angry she still was with Al. “Maybe you’ve fallen in love for once. Proper romantic love.”

“Heaven forbid.” Al sounded truly appalled.

And suddenly, Rosemary couldn’t find it in herself to be angry any more. Well, she’d known three years back that it would never be the same again, when she and Al had found jobs on opposite sides of the country from one another. It wasn’t like the relationship hadn’t been open then, after all, and Al was always best at caring for those things that were directly in front of him. Maybe this relationship had just been on life support ever since. Didn’t mean it didn’t hurt to call an official end to it, but… “So we part as friends?”

“Absolutely.”

“Love you, Al.”

“Love you too, Rosie.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hera escapes a talking-to by her mom and asks Doug on a date. Renée is having a rough time.

Hera tried not to fidget in the corner of her mother’s office, waiting for Miranda to get off her phone call and get back to lecturing Hera on how to behave at tonight’s fundraiser for Marcus Cutter’s congressional bid. The sooner the lecture was over, the sooner Hera could escape for what she really wanted to be doing—immersing herself in the bookkeeping for Bad Health Floral.

Not that her mother approved of that. No, Miranda Pryce would never approve of her daughter wasting her talents on balancing the accounts of a struggling flower shop, not when she could be working at a high-class accounting firm that helped the rich and the famous hide their assets in off-shore accounts. But Hera loved her job, loved all of her part-time clients, loved seeing small, struggling businesses slowly grow and become more stable.

Miranda hung up with an irritated little huff of breath. “Honestly. Why anyone wastes my time with that sort of thing... Now, where was I?”

“Appropriate topics of conversation, I believe,” Hera said.

“Don’t get smart with me, young lady.”

There was a knock on the office door, and Hera wilted back into her seat. Another interruption.

“Come in!”

“Dr. Pryce, I was wondering if I could pick your brain about some of the aspects of the Sensus project?” A middle-aged Black woman, her face haloed by a mass of silver curls, poked her head into the office and smiled at Hera’s mother. Hera couldn’t remember the woman’s name, though the face was vaguely familiar...

Miranda frowned. “I thought you were taking today off.”

The woman let out an airy little laugh that sounded fake to Hera. “Ah, well, my plans fell through, and I figured I might as well not waste the PTO.” The woman—Rosemary, Hera remembered suddenly—turned towards Hera and winked with the eye that was out of Miranda’s line of sight. “Of course, if you’re too busy right now...”

“It’s just my daughter. She can go. Hera, I expect you to be on time tonight.”

“Yes, mother,” Hera said steadily, trying to keep her voice calm. She had expected to be trapped with her mother for at least another hour; escaping sooner than that left her giddy and elated. Rosemary stepped back into the hall to let Hera past, and then slid into the office herself, closing the door behind her.

Blessed freedom. At least until tonight.

Hera didn’t wait. If she waited, that office door might open again and her mother might call her back and finish that lecture she had been itching to give Hera. She made her way down the stairs and out past the security checkpoint before the front door, shrugging into her coat and stepping out into frigid winter air, taking deep breaths to clear her lungs. The research labs at Goddard-Wright always had a sickly, chemical smell to them, even in her mother’s office, and it was always a relief to escape.

A short taxi ride later and she was pushing through the front door of Bad Health Floral. Doug smiled and waved from his station behind the counter. He seemed to be half-buried in buckets full of greenery, but she could still see his face light up with pleasure at the sight of her, and it lead to a subsequent lightening of her mood.

“You made it!”

She beamed back at him unselfconsciously. “I did. One of mom’s coworkers came to my rescue. Is the boss around?”

Renée appeared—out of nowhere, it seemed like, though she had to have been in the main room of the store just the same as Doug—and dumped more greenery into a bucket. “He had another late night. The computer in the back is all yours, though.”

“Thanks.” Hera slipped past the counter and through the door, awkwardly bumping her fist against Doug’s when he offered it up as she passed him by.

An hour later and it was time for a break. Alexander didn’t order all of his flowers from a single distribution company; he shopped around, getting deals where he could, occasionally partnering with a local greenhouse for some things that didn’t stand up to shipping well. The mountain of invoices each week was truly monumental, and while Alexander tried to remember to put them all into the open source financial management software he used for the shop as they came in, Hera liked to double-check things... and correct the mistakes he inevitably made.

Hera poked her head out of the back room to find Doug and Renée both hunched over the long counter in the front room, assembling centerpieces of some kind.

“I need a break. Mind if I bug you, or should I go on a walk?”

“Nah, it’s fine,” Doug said. Hera suspected from the glare Renée sent Doug’s way that it was not, in fact, actually fine, but decided to ignore it.

She leaned her elbows on the counter and looked over the centerpieces. Given the time of year, they were festive, heavy with holly and sprigs of pine. “What are these for?”

“Some fundraiser,” Renée said.

“‘Marcus Cutter for Congress,’” Doug said with a decidedly sarcastic bent to the words. “Pity that asshole is probably going to get elected.”

“Yeah.” Hera sighed and reached out to the closest centerpiece, fingering one of the leaves. “This was a good order, though. We’re finally out of the red that November left us in.”

“Oh thank god.” Renée looked relieved. “Here’s hoping it stays that way through the rest of the holidays.”

Hera and Doug raised their hands in salute to that.

“I’m actually going to be at this fundraiser,” Hera said.

“Oh, right. I keep forgetting that you’re rich,” Doug responded, buried up to his elbows in greenery once more.

“I’m not rich. My mom is rich. I’m...” Hera trailed off. What was she, anyway? She grimaced. “I’m someone who might be rich some day, unless my mom finally carries through with her threat to cut me out of her will, in which case I suspect I’ll be in living what’s called a state of genteel poverty.”

Renée smiled wryly at that. “What separates genteel poverty from regular poverty, anyway?”

“I think it means I’ll have nicer boots.”

Renée raised her eyebrows, then nodded. “Fair enough.” And then she cleared her throat and gestured at the centerpiece in front of her. “So, what do you think about these? Swanky enough for Mr. Marcus Cutter?”

Hera smiled and brushed her fingertips across a sprig of pine on the nearest arrangement. “They’re gorgeous. Who put together this arrangement?”

At her side Doug’s hands started shaking a bit as he shoved another branch of holly into the arrangement in front of him. “I, uh. I did,” he squeaked, his voice suddenly several octaves above where it had been. He cleared his throat. “Well, I did and then Renée and the doc helped me finesse it.”

Hera smiled. “It came out really well. Congrats.” There had been some worry, when Doug had been hired on at the shop, that he wouldn’t manage to get the hang of arranging flowers. He’d been in and out of seven or eight different retail jobs since graduating college, citing boredom, and they had all expected the same thing to happen here. But in spite of his distractible nature, he had really settled in at Bad Health Floral.

Hera thought it was Renée, personally. Renée was former Air Force and liked her surroundings—and the people surrounding her—to be in a certain sort of order, and for all that Renée and Doug wound up fighting more often than not, Hera thought Doug probably needed the structure Renée provided.

“Do you want to see them in action?” Hera asked on a sudden whim.

Doug gave her a startled look. “In action?”

“At the fundraiser. My ticket technically includes a plus one.”

Doug sighed and looked regretful. “I don’t think I’ve got anything nice enough to wear to something like that.”

“I’ll rent you a tux.” It would be a small price to pay to not be stuck with her mother and Marcus Cutter all evening.

“I couldn’t—“

“Please, Doug?” She snatched up his hand before he could pick up another sprig of greenery, ignoring Renée’s hastily swallowed snort of laughter. Well. It wasn’t like Doug was ever going to get around to asking her on a date on his own. Hera was ready for drastic measures.

And she really, really didn’t want to be alone at the fundraiser.

Doug wiped his free hand across his forehead, leaving a smear of green there. “Yeah. Sure. I... I guess I’m not actually doing anything else this evening.”

Hera grinned. “Great!” She glanced around the shop. “Either of you know where I can find a tape measure? I can get the tux without you if I’ve got the measurements right.”

“Just wait until we finish off the arrangements. I’m sure the old man would be happy to let Doug cut out early for this,” Renée said drily.

The words had a definite undertone of “so we can gossip about the two of you behind your backs,” but Hera tried not to mind. Because she had been trying to work Doug around to something like a date for the better part of three months, and now she’d finally achieved it.

She wasn’t going to let anything bring her down.

Alexander made his way downstairs in the mid-afternoon after another session with the foam roller, feeling very old and creaky indeed. The shop was empty except for Renée, who had a pile of slightly wilting flowers at her side that she appeared to be picking through and arranging into small bouquets.

“Good afternoon,” he said, after knocking on the doorframe of the open door to the back room. He hadn’t bothered putting on more than house slippers, and Renée sometimes reacted poorly if he accidentally snuck up on her. Better to make her aware of his presence from a distance.

“Good morning,” she responded, frowning down at the pile of flowers. “You sleep all right?”

“Yes. Very well.”

“Good.”

“I notice Doug is not here?”

Renée glanced up and grinned at him. “Hera finally got sick of waiting and asked him out. She’s got tickets to that fundraiser tonight that we did those arrangements for.”

“Really.” Alexander’s eyebrows climbed his forehead in surprise. “Doug at a fundraiser.”

Renée let out a little snort of laughter. “I know, right? Hera’s renting him a tux, but I don’t know what they’ll do with all that hair of his.”

“Perhaps a, what is phrase. ‘Man bun’?”

Renée doubled over her pile of flowers, giggling. “Sorry! Just the expression on your face...”

Alexander shrugged. “Perhaps we should try to smuggle you in with arrangements. Would like first-hand observation of this event.”

Renée’s mirth drained away. “You want a first-hand observation, you’ll have to go yourself. Dom’s still traveling for work, so it’s just me and my folks tonight.”

“Ah.” Alexander was silent for a moment, considering how much personal interest in her life his employee was likely to tolerate today. There were some days when she needed someone to talk to, but others... well, sometimes Renée Minkowski clung to her dignity so firmly that she didn’t let anything show.

He decided to try a foray in that direction anyway. “Your father?”

Renée sighed. “Is getting worse. We can’t really leave him unsupervised any more. And mom does her best, but after her hip replacement...”

“I could come by some evening. Give you a chance to get out of house.”

A tight little smile turned up the corners of Renée’s mouth. “Like you get any time to get out of the house yourself. I can’t ask you to spend your spare time looking after my parents. And what happens if an order comes in?”

Alexander sighed. Well, there was that.

“I’m doing just fine, really,” Renée said, sounding as if she were trying to convince herself of it.

Alexander patted her on the shoulder. “You are doing as well as can be expected. You do not have to pretend that is fine.”

Renée sighed and leaned into his hand for a moment. “No. I’m not doing just fine. But it’s easier to pretend that I am.”

“I know.”


	4. Chapter 4

Doug tugged at the collar of the dress shirt the tux rental place had fitted him out in. It was, in theory, the right size for his neck, but by the time they’d added a sedate black bow tie it had started to feel like the collar was slowly suffocating him to death.

He had considered telling Hera that he hadn’t worn a tux since he had gone to prom (junior prom, not senior, because by senior prom he’d had more important things to spend his money on than renting a crappy tux and paying for prom tickets) and hadn’t found it a comfortable experience, but suspected that she would have just looked at him with those big brown eyes of hers and he would have agreed to wear the tux despite his discomfort. Same end result, and at least this way Hera wouldn’t spend the entire night apologizing to him for asking him to wear a tux.

Doug turned around, examining himself in the mirror. This tux, at least, fit better than the last one he’d worn, even with the too-tight neck. It was amazing what a budget of more than fifty bucks could do.

There was a knock on the fitting room door.

“How’s it going?” It was Hera, who had left her credit card details with the proprietor before promising to be back in an hour.

“Uh. Well, judge for yourself, I guess?” Doug opened the door and let Hera in... and tried not to gape. She had a coat flung over her arm—a rich red wool, with some kind of fur trim—and was wearing a long, flowy blue dress that covered her almost entirely and somehow managed to leave nothing to the imagination at the same time.

Hell. He was going to hell.

The rush of excitement he got every time he spoke to Hera was bad enough. He didn’t need a reminder that she was absurdly attractive on top of it. Not when he wasn’t in any state at this point in his life to date.

Might make Kate happy if he started to date, though. She seemed to think that as long as he was single, he must be living in hope of reconciliation, no matter how many times he told her he wasn’t. They just weren’t good together. They could work together for Anne’s sake, but the better part of a decade later, even Doug could see that their relationship had run its course by the time their daughter had come into the picture. Having a baby together had only prolonged the relationship’s death throes.

Hera’s eyes lit up as she looked him over, and she stepped in close, reaching up to adjust his bow tie. “You clean up nice.”

“Uh. Thanks?” His brain had stopped working entirely. “I, uh. I don’t really know what to do with all of this.” He gestured at his unruly mane of hair, still down around his shoulders in a profusion of curls.

“Hold on, I’ve got something for that.” Hera dug in one of the coat’s pockets and pulled out a hair elastic, offering it up.

Doug took it from her with a quiet thanks and used it to pull his hair back into a low ponytail that wasn’t entirely a mess. “I dunno about this,” he joked, smiling past his awkwardness. “It’s not nearly formal enough. Maybe we should try your updo on me.”

Hera let out a hastily aborted snort of laughter. “Your hair is much thicker than mine, and all those curls! I’m not sure there are enough bobby pins in the world.”

“Then this will have to do.” And the awkwardness was mostly gone. That laughter had reminded him that this was just Hera, after all. And yeah, he was attracted to her, but they had always been friends, too, and he liked it that way. He offered her his arm. “Shall we go dazzle Marcus Cutter and company?”

Hera blanched and made a face. “Oh, hell no. No dazzling. I have to put in an appearance because my mom’s one of his biggest fundraisers, but I refuse to be any closer to the center of attention than that.”

“Then let’s go hide in a corner together from all the scary rich people, darling.”

At that Hera smiled and took his arm. “Let’s.”

Trouble started as soon as they reached the venue. “Hera Pryce… and you are?” the doorman asked, raising an eyebrow at Doug.

“Doug Eiffel. He’s my plus one,” Hera said, clinging desperately to his arm.

The man looked down his list. “Says here that your plus one is Warren Kepler.”

Hera blanched. Yet the latest in her mother’s attempts to set her up with someone well-off and acceptable, she had no doubt. Perhaps she _should_ have paid more attention to that morning’s scolding. “Well, I certainly didn’t invite him.”

“He was added this morning,” the doorman said. “I’m afraid I can’t let him in,” he added with a snooty look in Doug’s direction.

Hera took a deep breath, trying to keep from panicking, and resisted the urge to stamp her foot angrily. She straightened her spine, putting on her own snootiest expression and voice. “Yes, you can. Did you not hear my name? I’m Hera Pryce, and my mother will want to know why you kept me from coming in.”

“So sorry, but there are no exceptions.” The doorman turned his attention deliberately to his list, clearly snubbing Hera. “There was a very limited and exclusive guest list, and I can’t _possibly_ let in someone who isn’t on it. Now if you’ll step aside...”

“Perhaps I can help,” said a voice from behind them.

Hera turned and found the woman who had freed Hera from her mother’s office that morning. She had appeared behind them while Hera had been arguing with the doorman, and she had a bright, cheerful grin on her face as she stepped up to the little podium the doorman inhabited. “Rosemary Epps,” she said, her voice just as cheerful as her smile. “And I’m afraid my plus one couldn’t make it.”

The doorman frowned down at his list and appeared to be marking something off. “You may enter.”

“Wait just a moment,” she said, holding one finger up. “I said I could help. Give me this young lady’s seat and I’ll cede my spots to them.”

The doorman frowned at his list. “I couldn’t possibly do that. Miss Pryce is seated at the same table as Mr. Cutter—“

“Oh, _good_.” Rosemary sounded delighted by this, while Hera was horrified by the very thought. “I was hoping I would get a chance to give that man a piece of my mind.” She glanced over her shoulder at Hera. “That is, if you don’t mind giving up such a choice seat to a complete stranger.”

Hera stared at her, wide-eyed and horrified by the thought of having to eat dinner at the same table as both her mother and Marcus Cutter. She waved her hands to dismiss the woman’s concern. “Please, go right ahead.”

There was a little more grumbling from the doorman, but eventually Rosemary coaxed him around to letting the seat swap happen, and Hera and Doug followed in the boisterous woman’s wake. Hera’s knees had gone wobbly in the aftermath, and she found herself clinging to Doug as they entered the event hall.

“Let’s go find that dark corner for a bit,” he murmured, grinning down at her. “See a safe one?”

She could have kissed him for that. And fortunately, no one was sitting yet; people were mingling in little crowds, some sipping champagne or being offered little nibbly things off trays by waiters. If they disappeared into a dark corner or an anteroom until she regained her composure, she doubted anyone would notice. “Thanks. Ah…” she pointed randomly at one of the corners.

Doug escorted her towards it, his arm sturdy against hers. Unfortunately, she hadn’t been able to tell from across the room that it was occupied. Fortunately, the person it _was_ occupied by was her sister Rhea, in her wheelchair, with her caretaker Isabel at her side in a chair obviously pilfered from one of the dinner tables.

Hera almost managed to smile at the sight, and actually did manage it when Isabel took one look at her and vacated that chair, offering it up with her usual butch courtliness.

“You made it,” Rhea signed, a look of relief on her face.

“You know mother would never let me get away with skipping out,” Hera signed back, grimacing at her older sister. Out loud, and accompanying the spoken words with signing, she added “Doug, this is Rhea, my sister. Rhea, this is Doug Eiffel, my…”

“I’m her plus one,” Doug signed, his motions far more fluent than Hera would have expected.

“You sign?” she burst out.

Doug laughed and looked a little uncomfortable. “My daughter’s deaf,” he signed by way of explanation.

“You’re dating a single dad?” Rhea signed, an incredulous look on her face. “Oh, mother is going to be thrilled about that.”

“And I only went to community college,” Doug signed, swiftly hiding the somewhat panicked look that had flitted across his face when Rhea had mentioned them dating. Hera suppressed a sigh at the sight of it. He kept saying that he had too much on his plate to consider dating… and maybe he was telling the truth. She hadn’t known about his daughter.

“I share custody with my daughter’s mother,” Doug added.

“Well. Good luck introducing him to mother,” Rhea signed, still looking incredulous. “She’s going to go ballistic.”

“Hopefully I can avoid it. Some lady let us swap places with her when it turned out she wasn’t using her plus one.”

Rhea sighed. “Lucky you. I’m still at that table.”

“She’d put me with some man named Warren Kepler,” Hera signed with a grimace.

Rhea grimaced back. “A lucky escape.Mother keeps inviting him over to the house, and the man is boring as hell. Fortunately, I can just pretend to not read lips, but Isabel here has to listen to him bore on and on and on.”

Isabel laughed at that. “I just tune him out, honestly,” she signed.

“Definitely sounds like a lucky escape,” Doug added.

Isabel raised her eyebrows significantly and made a face. “You have no idea.”

A few minutes later and they were all summoned to sit down at dinner. Isabel left the chair where it was, and Hera figured out why as she helped Rhea navigate her way towards the table at the head of the room—they must have left a chair in the space meant to be occupied by Rhea, and Rhea always liked to stay in her wheelchair when she could. She wasn’t always strong enough to transfer herself from her wheelchair to a regular chair on her own, and she hated losing the maneuverability that staying in her wheelchair afforded her. After all, she always said, there might come a time when Isabel’s strong arms weren’t there to help her haul herself from one to the other.

She glanced up at her mother, too. Miranda Pryce was looking up and down the table with a frown, squinting through her bottle-thick glasses at the space that Hera was supposed to be in and which was now occupied by the short, round person of Rosemary Epps. Hopefully her mother wouldn’t spot her—oh, no, she was scanning the room now. Hera resisted the urge to shrink behind Doug and instead waved languidly at her mother.

Miranda looked about ready to get up and storm over, looking for some kind of explanation, but fortunately Marcus Cutter tapped the mike just then, getting ready to give some kind of speech, and Miranda was forced to subside back into her seat as the room quieted down. Hera doubted that she would be able to avoid her mother for the entire evening, not now that Miranda knew where she was, but it was a welcome respite, all the same.

Even if it did mean she had to listen to Marcus Cutter lie through his teeth at a room full of donors for the next hour.


	5. Chapter 5

Dinner was served almost immediately once Marcus Cutter was done with his little speech, as he called it, giving Miranda Pryce no chance to come chastise Hera for what her glares clearly telegraphed was unacceptable behavior on Hera’s part. Thank goodness Doug _was_ at her side; Hera didn’t think she’d have been able to get through Cutter’s speech without falling asleep if she hadn’t had Doug to exchange mocking, eyebrow-raised looks with, and definitely wouldn’t have survived her mother’s furious looks. She would have burst into flame on the spot, scientific probability or no.

She had considered signing snarky comments at Doug, now that she knew he would understand them, but she didn’t quite dare. As bad as her mother’s eyesight was, she might still be able to make some of it out if Hera wasn’t cautious. And Rhea definitely would, though Hera knew her sister wouldn’t give her away. Well, not unless she started laughing.

And truth was, Hera was still shaken. The reveal that Doug knew sign language would have been startling enough without the reason why.

She hadn’t known that he had a daughter. Maybe she should have guessed that it was something like that, when he’d shied away from her every time she got close to suggesting that they go on a date, but Doug always seemed so carefree that it never would have occurred to her to think he might be a dad.

She wondered how old his daughter was. She wondered if there were other things he wasn’t telling her about his life.

And she wondered if they could escape this event room in the next fifteen seconds, because her mother had gotten to her feet and looked absolutely furious.

No one did furious quite like Miranda Pryce. Her spine stiffened and her face went still, almost blank... unless you were close enough to see her eyes, distorted behind the thick lenses she wore.

If you were close enough to see them, well, all you could really do was run away and pray for your life.

Hera was praying right now.

“Doug.” She tugged at his elbow, distracting him from the remains of his dinner. He had claimed to not be impressed by the steak, but he had devoured his entirely and had happily taken the second half of hers when she had been too anxious about the upcoming confrontation with her mother to eat more than the first half.

To his credit, his attention did snap immediately to her, though he wasn’t quite as good at picking up on context clues as she’d hoped. “Yeah?”

“You ready to go?”

Doug frowned, obviously paying proper attention now, though what sort of look was on her face to make him look back at her like that, she didn’t know. He pushed his chair back and stood. “Let’s.”

She didn’t dare look back as they made their way to the coat check and out of the building. She didn’t know how or why they managed to escape without an angry confrontation with her mother. But Hera was definitely not going to look a gift horse in the mouth, even if all it meant was that she was putting off said angry confrontation for another day.

It was frigidly cold outside, and Hera found herself shivering even with her thick winter coat. Doug, who had been strolling along a careful distance from her side, transferred his bag of clothing to the other hand and fell in step with Hera, lifting his arm and offering her space at his side. Hera took the implied offer with alacrity, grateful for the heat of his body at her side.

“So... are we walking anywhere in particular?”

Hera shook her head. “No,” she managed to get out a moment later. “I just needed to get out of that place.”

There was a contemplative silence from Doug. “Want to go get a slice of pizza or something?”

Hera laughed at that. A sad facsimile of a laugh, it was true, but a genuine one. “How can you still be hungry?”

Doug shrugged. “Me? I’m not. But I thought you might be, and I always have room for a slice.” He shivered himself. “And it would get us out of this cold.”

Hera couldn’t quite bring herself to tell him that she found the frigid air almost cleansing, so instead she said “All right. Know anyplace good?” and let Doug lead her to a hole-in-the-wall restaurant that served pizza by the slice.

Doug laughed as he tucked a napkin into the front of his shirt collar. “Look at us, huh? Way overdressed for a joint like this.”

“I didn’t know you had a daughter,” Hera found herself blurting out.

Doug hastily chewed and swallowed the bite of Hawaiian pizza he had just taken. “I don’t...” His gaze darted away from her. “I had partial custody. I lost it,” he said quietly. “I don’t... I don’t like to talk about it. It was stupid.” He cleared his throat and set the piece of pizza down. “So I pay child support, and I see my daughter with supervision. And I...” his voice choked off in his throat. “Jesus Christ, Hera. I’m a fuck-up.”

Hera frowned. This conversation had become fraught, in a way she hadn’t expected. “Are you okay? Did you drink too much wine?” But the instant she asked the question, she knew it was the wrong one, because there in her memory was Doug reaching for the wine glass next to his place setting again and again, each time his fingers closing desperately around the stem for a moment and then setting it aside, until he had finally pushed it out of his easy reach.

It hadn’t occurred to her that that was weird, before.

Doug smiled wryly at her, as if reading her realization on her face. He toasted her with his slice of pizza. “Eat up. It’s good stuff, I promise.”

“Doug...”

“Don’t,” he said, his voice brittle.

“I just—I’m sorry—I shouldn’t have—“ the words spilled out, swift and panicked, piling up over one another as a mortified heat ran through her entire body, followed by a chill.

“Hey. Hey. Look at me, darlin’.” Doug pulled her hands carefully away from her face. Hera hadn’t even been aware of moving to shut out the rest of the world. “I’m not angry with you. Not your fault if you bump up against a sore spot I didn’t tell you I had.”

His thumbs rubbed across her palms in slow, soothing circles, and Hera watched them blankly, slowing the breath that was panting out of her to match those lazy circles. Doug released her hands and smiled cautiously at her after a moment.

“Better?”

“Yeah.” Hera took a deep breath and met his eye. “Thanks.” And she was suddenly starving, so she snatched her piece of pizza up and did her best to inhale it. Doug smiled properly at her and followed suit, and they kept their conversation light and easy for the rest of the evening.

She would think about what it all meant later. And maybe, if she was careful not to bump up against any more of his sore spots, he might trust her enough some day to tell her why he had them.

“Dr. Pryce, a word?” Rosemary Epps stepped in close to Miranda’s side and somehow managed to slide her arm beneath Miranda’s in a way that stopped her short. Miranda turned her glare on the other woman, but if it had any effect on Rosemary, she did not show it.

“What?” Miranda spat. She had no time for this right now. What Hera had just done was unacceptable behavior.

“Now, is that any way to talk to a friend, Miranda?” Rosemary sounded as if she were teasing Miranda deliberately with that sudden relaxation of the strict protocol she always stuck to at work, but there was no mockery in the smile Rosemary beamed up at her. “You promised me an introduction to Mr. Cutter. I’m claiming it.”

“In a moment.” But Rosemary’s hand clamped down on Miranda’s wrist when she tried to wrench herself away.

“Now.” Rosemary raised her eyebrows. “Because you’re angry and you’ll regret what you’re about to do, darling.”

“And what am I about to do?” Miranda snarled, a polite smile pasted on her face to fool anyone who might be watching this exchange.

“You’re about to make sure that your daughter cuts you out of her life the instant she’s able to. And once she does that, you’re never going to get back in.” Rosemary tilted her head to one side, a wry little smile on her lips. “Trust me. I know.”

“You’re not a mother.”

“No. But I’m a daughter, and if you think holding the purse strings is enough to make your children bow to your every whim I’m here to tell you you’re wrong. Sooner or later you’re going to push her too far, and then—“ Rosemary snapped the fingers of her free hand for emphasis. “If you’re lucky, she’ll come to your funeral. Goodness knows I couldn’t bear to go to either of my parents’.”

Miranda felt her insides freeze over. “She wouldn’t.” Neither of her daughters would. They needed her too much.

Rosemary gave her a pitying look. “Well. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” And she released Miranda’s arm.

By the time Miranda made it to the coat check, both Hera and that shabby looking young man Hera had brought with her were long gone. Miranda was left to stew in her own irritation and to try not to notice the way that Rhea flinched away from her every time Miranda came near.


End file.
